Paul Farrell lights it up in his latest market commentary, which puts even some of the more hard-core realists out there to shame: "Wall Street is a loser. Stocks are Wall Street’s ultimate sucker bet.
And it’ll sucker you again. You’ll lose, worse than in the last decade.Wake up before Wall Street banks trigger the next meltdown, igniting
mass bankruptcy." Um, wow. And seeing how we have been saying that only absolutely immaculate top tickers should be in this market, we agree wholeheartedly with Farrel.

And here are his 10 reasons to stay away until after the next crash, via Market Watch.

1. American stocks are a high-risk sucker bet

That’s the view of Peter Morici, the former chief economist at the International Trade Commission: that U.S. stocks are a sucker bet. Is Main Street waking up to Wall Street’s con? Maybe. “With corporate profits breaking records, Wall Street anxiously anticipates the return of the individual investors to the stock market. It may be a long wait, because the little guy may have concluded investing in stocks is a sucker bet.”

America’s divided into two stock markets: one for Wall Street’s rich insiders, another for Main Street’s suckers: “Investors, as opposed to traders, buy stocks in companies whose profits they expect to rise. The conventional wisdom says stock prices will follow profits up, but over the last two business cycles, that simply has not happened.”

From 1998 to 2010, profits rose 203%. But the S&P 500 was up just 7%. And still, naive investors buy into Wall Street’s sucker bet.

Who’s pocketing the huge profits? Rich insiders. “Because most of the increased value created by higher profits,” says Morici, “has been captured by hedge funds, electronic traders, private equity funds, and aggressive M&A shops, free standing and at major investment banks, which have multiplied over the last two decades.”

Warning: With the resurrection of the GOP and Reaganomics, Wall Street will skim more from Main Street, get even richer. And yes, you’ll lose more.

2. New ‘big short’ dead ahead: Derivatives con game will crash again

In a Bloomberg story, “Big Short” author Michael Lewis asks: “Why are the same Wall Street banks that lobbied so hard to dilute the passages in the Dodd-Frank financial overhaul bill banning proprietary trading now jettisoning their proprietary-trading groups, without so much as a whimper?”

The answer’s simple: Wall Street’s sneaky and will do anything to keep the derivatives casino running hot. Insiders “have no intention of ceasing their prop trading,” according to Lewis. “They are merely disguising the activity, by giving it some other name.”

3. Hedge funds shorting China: Warning — U.S. faces collateral damage

Get it? China may well crash first. Fortune’s Bill Powell interviewed hedge-fund kingpin Jim Chanos of Kynikos Associates, who’s “betting that China’s economy is about to implode in a spectacular real estate bust.” China is “an economy on steroids.” In a Charlie Rose interview, Chanos said “China’s on an economic treadmill to hell.” If so, then all of Wall Street’s highly promoted emerging markets are also sucker bets.

Another hedge-fund player warned: Chanos “is shorting the entire country,” including a company “Goldman Sachs recommended as a buy … the listing for the Hong Kong Stock Exchange … China’s Merchants Bank, one of Beijing’s largest.”

Back in the 1980s, Japan “grew largely on the back of capital investment” and then turned into “a capital-destruction machine, and that’s what China is now. You have an economy that’s 60% fixed-asset investment, and not even in the developing world is that sustainable.”

Chanos won’t pinpoint the timing or the trigger: “He just believes it’s coming,” and he is betting on it. Reminds us of Henry Paulson shorting Goldman Sachs’ crooked deals before the 2008 crash.

4. New insider-trading indictments killing Main Street confidence

Investor distrust of Wall Street’s casino will skyrocket in 2011. Before the elections in November, an AP-CNBC poll found 61% of investors had already lost confidence in the market, thanks to extreme volatility; 55% believe the market’s rigged to favor insiders.

It’ll get much worse as the FBI/DOJ investigations of insider trading add indictments and perp walks. As more facts surface, this could get bigger than Enron and the SEC mutual-fund fraud suits combined: more proof of Wall Street’s rigged game.

5. Banksters’ perfect gambling record proves stocks a rigged game

Last year we reported that Goldman Sachs made more than $100 million in profit a day for 23 days in one month. This year the con game has gotten bolder.

Morici says “J.P. Morgan and Bank of America went through the entire third quarter without a negative trading day, no losing days on proprietary trades. Unless you believe in perfection, something stinks about the information they are using. If someone is winning all the time, then someone else is losing. That’s the ordinary investor. Stocks have become a rigged game.”

Yes, America’s 95 million average investors are suckers in a rigged game.

6. Wall Street is socially worthless, existing only to make insiders rich

In the New Yorker, John Cassidy writes: “Much of what investment bankers do is socially worthless.” Wall Street exists solely “to make itself very, very rich.”

Yes “worthless,” but “for a long time, economists and policy makers have accepted the financial industry’s appraisal of its own worth, ignoring the market failures and other pathologies that plague it.”

Worse, continues Cassidy, “even after all that has happened, there is a tendency in Congress and the White House to defer to Wall Street.” Why? Wall Street’s huge lobbying war chest. Soon all this will come to a disastrous climax, Wall Street will implode on blind greed.

7. The Fed is America’s worst nightmare, a $3.3 trillion moral hazard

Moral hazard simply means no consequences for Wall Street’s complicity in triggering the 2008 catastrophe. As a result, Wall Street insiders came away believing they can take bigger and riskier bets in the future because they will get away with it next time, too.

Why? Because America’s suckers will be dumb enough to bail them out the next time, too, with no consequences when they fail miserably again.

Last week the Fed made the moral-hazard risks more obvious by releasing 21,000 documents showing how an arrogant Ben Bernanke approved $3.3 trillion in cheap-money taxpayer bailouts to incompetent Wall Street banks, blue chips and even banks in Switzerland, France, etc. Bernanke’s making fiscal policy, and he’s a tragic disaster. When President Obama reappointed him last year, we echoed author Nassim Nicholas Taleb, calling it Obama’s worst domestic-policy blunder.

But it can get worse: Caving in to the GOP on Bush tax cuts to the rich will funnel billions more of our tax dollars into the rigged game. Final proof Obama is Wall Street’s co-conspirator in the class war against 300 million average Americans.

8. Wake up to a new normal: no growth, deflation

In his latest newsletter, economist Gary Shilling, a longtime Forbes columnist, warns: “Real economic growth rates of 2% or less are likely through 2011.” But we need 3.3% just to keep up with population growth.

So “high unemployment remains a political problem … with weak economic growth, looming deflation, and the dollar and Treasurys remaining the safe havens in a sea of global trouble.”

Warning: America’s new era, featuring no growth, deflation and a jobless recovery, will continue for years, resembling Japan over the past two decades. Worse, brutal deficit cuts will trigger riots, as in England, France.

9. Privatize Social Security: New GOP Congress loves dumb ideas

Here’s political Reaganomics at its numbest. Alan Sloan writes in Fortune: “Privatizing Social Security: Still a Dumb Idea.” The idea was “slaughtered when George W. Bush proposed it.” Yet many GOP millionaires in the new Congress campaigned on privatization.

“You’d think,” Sloan posits, “that the stock market’s stomach-churning gyrations — two 50%-plus drops in just over a decade — would have shown conclusively the folly of retirees having to bet their eating money on the market. But you’d be wrong.” They’re about to resurrect it. Why? Simple. Because the GOP is the party of the rich.

Yes, it’s that simple: Wall Street’s casino would love to get their hands on another $20 trillion of your retirement money, to gamble in their derivatives casino.

“Why is privatizing Social Security such a turkey?” asks Sloan. “Because retirees shouldn’t have to depend on the market’s vagaries for survival money. More than half of married couples over 65 and 72% of singles get more than half their income from Social Security.” And “for 20% of 65-and-up couples and 41% of singles, Social Security is 90% or more of their income.”

Imagine if our Social Security had been privatized in the 2008 meltdown: It would have done more damage than nuclear warheads, totally wiping out the American economy.

10. Warning: Wall Street will lose another 20% of your money by 2020

We have been making these same arguments for a long time: Wall Street has lost trillions in the stock market since 2000, a year in which the Dow Jones Industrial Average peaked at 11,722. It’s barely at 11,000 today. Adjusted for inflation, Wall Street has lost 20% of your money in the past decade.

Wall Street’s a loser. And, worse, Wall Street will do it again by 2020. That’s right: It will lose another 20% of your retirement money.

Warning: Stocks are a sucker bet at Wall Street’s rigged casino. Buy stocks and lose. In fact, you’ll probably lose more that 20% when the third meltdown of the 21st century explodes. Bigger losses than in 2000 and 2008 combined. When Wall Street’s too-greedy-to-fail banks finally collapse. When they cannot push the second Great Depression downhill one more time. When taxpayers revolt, refusing to bail out our corrupt banking system. When the American people force Congress to return to tough 1930s regulation.

Folks, Wall Street is suicidal. It’s kamikaze. A deadly game of Russian roulette with America’s future. Wall Street’s self-destructive greed is driving America to the edge of total failure. Yet Wall Street’s behavior is so predictable — like a blind addict trapped in denial, unable to see the deadly consequences of his behavior.

The notion that privatizing SS is dumb is....stupid. Privatizing doesn't, and probably shouldn't, involve equity investments, but it does involve controlling your own funds, which ultimately will be the only way you get the money you earned from a desperate Ruling Class.

Entirely agree (along with 95%+ of population) for no bailout for wall street. But letting an organized crime syndicate (government) tax anybody is a recipe for slavery. What you send out you will receive in time. Why can't people who want to "stick it to the rich" learn this basic lesson of reality? Let "voluntary exchange" be your motto!

How about they me back all the money I paid into SS knowing full well I will never be a recipient of it?

Many folks do not know that most legal immigrants (like I was), pay into the exact same deduction set that a citizen pays.

And by the way, in classic dog follow master style, India's pension funds were given to three large, corrupt finance con-glomerates,to invest for "greater prosperity for your golden years".

Every time I speak to people here, I try to point out the play by play, how it resembles exactly what happened and is happening in the US in particular and the west in general, and all I get is mostly glazed stares and stupid statements like "well, poor people have TV now, isn't that amazing?".

Everything said in this newsletter is true for India, with probably far worse consequences because the populace at large is currently drunk on consumption.

There is a big jump from this "term" to what they actually do which is destroy society. Time to put these folks down in the name of progress. Christmas Eve when they are leaving "church" services sounds like good timing to me.

Now on ABC World News Nightly's Money Segment (sponsored by Charles Schwab):

Lester Holt: Stocks lost a little momentum today, and bonds sold off, too. For more on this, we're bringing in our resident Wall Street & Financial expert, James Cramer, to help us understand what is going on.

Thanks for joing us, Jim.

James Cramer: Good to be on, Lester. Thank you.

Lester Holt: What is happening out there, Jim?

James Cramer: Basically, this is a non-event. The economy is firing on all cylinders now, and Bernanke totally nailed it with his '60 Minutes' appearance, where he totally like convinced everyone, and for good reason given his track record of total success, that he is going to make sure we grow GDP at about 63% this year, and we'll have a budget surplus within 6 months, on top of all that.

Lester Holt: So today's selling was a little pre year end profit taking?

James Cramer: Exactly, Lester. Just buy the fuc...err...I think everyone agrees that there's some tax planning and other dynamics that were the theme today, but this is one strong market, set to explode higher, based on the most solid economic fundamentals that we've ever seen, or have seen in at least 18 days.

Lester Holt: That's great news! So maybe I should think about picking up some cheap Apple or Netflix stock tomorrow? Haha!!

James Cramer: Exactly, Lester. Or Amazon. Or Crocs. Or Seagate. These are the stocks you want to be in. Just buy the fucking dip, okay?

Lester Holt: Pardon me, and I apologize to the viewers, but we seem to be having some audio and technical problems...thanks for being on, Jim Cramer.

James Cramer: (in a still very audible, non-technically impaired voice): Look man, strong hands to weak hands. Sheeple shearing time, okay? There is no way these shitbag stocks on this fucking infected festering udder of a cow's tit market are remotely justified at even half these valuations, okay? I got mistresses and shit, and I got a bad nose candy habit..I got kids in private school, and baby needs a new pair of shoes, and New York is fucking expensive, you know what I mean, and in fact, I'm jonesing for some blow right now becau....{screen fades to black}

Lester Holt: Okay everyone, that was James Cramer, and we're obviously having some technical problems. Now a message from TD Waterhouse.

Lester Holt: "Jim, it has taken me a long time to get the courage to say this, but could you let me give you a blow job in the green room? It would really mean allot to me. You must understand the courage it took to reveal my feelings"

While this article was larded up with some facts, the piece as a whole reads as a screed for government controls. It pushes the real agenda of "the banksters", Congress, and other ne-er do wells: increase, always increase, the power, size, and scope of the State.

For the record, today's system of regulation, fiat currency, central banks, high-profile Congressional inquiries, lobbying for more protections, etc. is *fascism*. Mussolini would be proud.

The antidote is not yet more regulation, more enforcement actions, and more litigation. It is to repeal all of the insane policies, regulations, court precedents, central bank mandates, etc. that make this crooked game even possible.

Parasites cannot exist in a free market. In order to earn a profit where the counterparty has a choice to do business, or not, or to work with your competitor, you have to *add* value.

No, the real antidote is to hurry up and get on with the collapse that we all know is coming. The US is far too big and works only for the benefit of a tiny number of elites. This is how most empires and in fact most societies run to their natural end stage.

The US is collapsing all around us. The only questions are how fast the collapse will proceed and how. The long drawn-out collapse benefits the elites while doing only more harm to the rest of us.

Well, in an ideal world the regulations would be repealed, but clearly in the world we live it it will take collapse for all the regulations to be annulled. And then the economy will start to recover, and maybe America will be re-industrialized.

I read a news story they stopped kids selling lemonade on the side of the street. 'Nuff said. What did those kids learn from that? Do what the gov't says, be dependent on the gov't, and don't get any 'bright ideas' about entrepreneurship or self sufficiency!

The antidote is not yet more regulation, more enforcement actions, and more litigation. It is to repeal all of the insane policies, regulations, court precedents, central bank mandates, etc. that make this crooked game even possible.

Agreed. The problem, of course, is to distinguish "bad laws" from "good laws" since every law benefits some people to the detriment of others. Easiest solution is to just start repealing laws one by one, working backwards from the most recent one passed. Stop when you get to the year 1912 or 4% unemployment, whichever comes first. And close the law schools for a generation just for good measure. We got enough lawyers. Better yet, convert all the law schools to free institutions teaching only Chinese law. Let's ship a few million lawyers over there to wreck their country.

"The antidote is not yet more regulation, more enforcement actions, and more litigation. It is to repeal all of the insane policies, regulations, court precedents, central bank mandates, etc. that make this crooked game even possible."

"Easiest solution is to just start repealing laws one by one, working backwards from the most recent one passed. Stop when you get to the year 1912 or 4% unemployment, whichever comes first."

I agree with your sentiment but laws (as in court precedence) don't just get "repealed". The only way this has happened historically was with a complete dissolution of the government, as in revolution.

A client of a major Swiss bank was recently refused access to his physical gold and had to hire attorneys and threaten to expose the bank publicly before finally getting it back in his own hands, according to Jim Rickards of Omnis.

“My inference is that that gold was not there,” Rickards told King World News. “The bank had to scramble, go out and find it somewhere before they could make good delivery.”

Rickards expects the world will eventually go to a gold standard-backed currency.

“To me, the big issue is, is it going to be intelligent or is it going to be ugly?” Rickards says. “Is it going to be something we think about, we have a public debate, hearing in Congress … we give some thought to, and then, over time … we do it in stages” so that markets can adjust.

Unfortunately, says Rickards, we’re on “the other path,” ignoring the issue and acting as if gold plays no role in finance, “which, of course, it does, keep printing money until almost spontaneous collapse of the dollar and then, in the midst of chaos, on an emergency basis, have the president announce that we’re back on the gold standard.”

Rickards' advice? Get your gold out now before other banks begin following suit.

The short covering and explosion of GLD is going to be awesome. Only wish I had more, never know when the big day will show up. The fact they are bold enough to move allocated gold that he is assuredly paying a storage fee for means that gold is a lot tighter then they would probably like.

it may or may not be, but don't ever underestimate the crookedness of bankers and their willingness to break every rule in order to try to maximize their profitability.

As long as there are people who blindly chant "pay back what you owe," regarding bank debt, we'll have this problem. They can't answer whether you have an obligation to pay on something the bank didn't even own, like if I foreclose on you when I lent you my friend's car while he was on vacation.

Why should we ever buys stocks again? How about only investing in real goods, like precious metals. I will be carrying forward stock losses for the rest of my life (I am 39), so pretty well convinced that real stuff is the only way to go.

Because then you don't participate in the "stock delusion". The one where they tell you that you are an "owner" of the company and get to share it it's profits and get to become a corporate evangalizer saying how great thier shit is.

The reality is you're a unsecured creditor that they borrow against they will wipe you to fucking zero without any moral compunction whatsoever. It's just a matter of being good long enough to get enough people to sucker in and then letting them know how it really is.

That sounds like fun... right up to the wiped to zero part. The housing market was clearly that same delusion. Everyone believed this BS, even the mortgage brokers who should have been gym teachers in a sane world but were pulling down seven figures, and are now working on variable comp as collections agents. Everyone wants theirs, and will participate in this charade to see if they can get some too. As CogDis wrote about in his manifesto, it is a choice to step away from that game. Stocks are a game too. What is amusing is that even with all this evidence that this is a farce, the headline still talks about 'getting back in'. I'm thinking it is more like getting out for good.

stepping away is not as easy as it sounds. even getting your own farmland and growing your own food is not enough, because the county requires a property tax, so you must actually sell enough food to cover this or risk losing your property. Rome must be fed.

i can't really improve on this article. if you could read my mind is really the title of this article...

"The Fed is America’s worst nightmare, a $3.3 trillion moral hazard"

i would only remark that the fed is america's worst moral turd....i am all for seeking the death penalty against bernanke and the banksters....in fact why not do what canada's leaders did for assange - on the administration's prodding - and call for bernanke's assassination by a drone?

At one time this wasn't the case; but, thanks to the warmongers and their Vietnam blunder the books got altered: the Johnson Administration, I believe steered SS funds into the general fund; next to bat was Nixon, who then unleashed the almighty fiat USD!

And since you were long so often on the right side, 30x leverage too, you avoided be in any equity that delisted or went belly up poof style, you never saw illiquid conditions such as those in 2008 where many couldn't catch a bid until their stops were blown out of the water by 30% or more, and after shorting big crashes, you immediately went back in long with leverage as soon as the route was over?

You are pure genious and a trading god, and this is why you're truly know better than people like Michael Lewis.

Or you've done well short-term only to have a disgorgement coming.

Or you're a Raymond James salesman. And formerly worked at Merrill Lynch.

or he is another Harry Wanger avatar goading "perma-bears" as a social experiment.

Akak nailed it, don't give these/this moron/s airtime, purporting to think government sponsored indexes is good for 'merica just to get a reaction. Trading success is everything, moral judgement is for 'tards is the credo. Except they are total bullshit about their trades...in June 09 Harry Wanger was calling for BAC $40 on Marketwatch.

Nothing has 'worked' at all, youve just proclaimed the ER victim on total life support as having ust won the NYC marathon...just because ht near dead victim is still breathing due to a forced ventilator does not make him an olympian. Remove the total life support and then see how healthy your patient is!

"What good does all this whining do? If the markets were so worried, equities would collapse overnight and bond yields would soar. Why isn't that happening (Serious)?"

Overnight? No. Timing is, as always, the thorn in the side of anyone who follows the market. But the same people who are on here now being gloomy are the people who were telling the world quite clearly in 2005 that housing was headed for a disaster. The fact is that they were right, and they are right now. But that still doesn't tell us anything about timing. How much oomph do TPTB have in them to keep this game floating? I don't see the wiser posters on this site making specific calls on the date and hour of the collapse. What they are pointing out, however, is that the system is even more unstable now than it was in 2005. That particular iteration of the market lasted ~5 years (2003-2007). It seems hard to imagine that playing basically the same playbook over again (though minus housing this time and with a deja-vu sense of similar overvaluations to those in the tech bubble), they can hold their traction the same amount of time again. And 2008 was worse than the tech crash. Do you want to bet that the next slip will be less painful? As other posters have said, if you are able to time this market and get out quickly and get out right, then you will do fine. But for most of us, who do not have the inside information of the "fleecers", this is a very dangerous game to play. Better not to play it and put money in physical PMs and other hard commodities, which will hold at least some value in a crash. Will they drop, sure. To nothing? No. The same is not a guarantee with the equity market.

that newly counterfeited money is strictly for insiders in order to buy bread and milk distributors at today's prices. By the time this counterfeited money makes it into the hands of a little old lady scrubbing toilets for bread and milk, she'll be able to pay full upwardly adjusted prices to help the bottom line of the newly formed business. Its a very moral and profitable system.

Your optimism is very natural and in most cases would be healthy. However, in this case I believe it is really just denial, whether out of sincere misbelief or just misplaced hope.

The essays of Charles Hugh Smith (see his website www.oftwominds.com) lay it out as clearly as anything I've seen. The US is on its downslope, and the elites will burn and sacrifice everyone else to be the last to hit the bottom.

By all means, do as you suggest, but don't say a year or two from now that you couldn't have known what was really coming.

If you view the recovery solely based upon the stock market - you might be right for now. But the record number of people on food stamps and the 1/7 homeowners delinquent on their mortgages might disagree with you and your economic assessment. The macro numbers suggest the crash is ongoing.

How was Bernanke right one year ago? He's had to double down on QE, we're at the same "official" UE rate with more people really out of work, gold and silver have gone up a gazillion percent (and stocks are all down on a gold-basis).

What exactly was BB right about? I don't we'll see zombies in 2011 (other than banks) but the world is still on the edge of the cliff.

Have to agree. When I was younger I lost 10 years of my investing life following doom and gloom and Austrian economics. But the game is RIGGED. You have to discard reason or what "should" happen. All the predictions of doom are what should happen in a NON-rigged market. Why would TPTB suddenly un-rig it? No, no, they have a ton of tricks left in their bag. Making gold illegal (done before), temporarily barring short/long futures positions (famous sugar scandal), calling bank holidays... TPTB ain't TPTB because they're rookies.

Yep, ole' Greenspan was so powerful when dot.com's imploded, and equity certificate millionaires turned into beggars, and Bernanke did a heckuva job for the people still underwater 50% or more for those long stocks over the last decade, who were down 80% or more back in 2008 - they've gotten 30% of their losses recouped - Yippie!

Never fight the central banksters, folks - that's what these wise men are telling you.

You wouldn't want to take risks like those identified in 'The Big Short,' only to make way too much money on spotting a broken system...and the system has NEVER been more broken than it is under Ben BerBankScheme.

Unlike some I respect your descent, but for me QE, the mortgage fraud fiasco, the general housing market, Europe, & the Chinese housing bubble do not bode well for the markets. There's still a lot more air in that housing bubble, and since Americans don't manufacture anything tangible, our employment situation won't improve. I don't see how the markets can shrug off those problems.

i wish people would understand that there are many countries which are socialist, and are free countries. don't confuse (like most of america) socialism with totalitarian communism.

go to norway, holland, germany, austria, sweden etc....these are all countries where socialist politics and policies are very strong. people are still free there. in many ways more so. free to read, say, buy, go where they want. its as free if not more then america.

You are right socialism doesn't equal communism, although there are similarities. Also many democracies have social programs that work. The people in the U.S. are programmed and when they hear socialism or communism it equates to evil or undemocratic principles. Its a very effective propaganda tool.

I am pointing out that you can't even mention these other types of programs without being labelled because of the propaganda. I don't adhere to either one, but Singapore has socialized Health as well as private hospitals and they aren't running out of money. They are in pretty good financial shape. Certain programs are effective regardless of the label put on them.

Singapore has socialized Health as well as private hospitals and they aren't running out of money.

And this is your example of a free country? That's a bit of a joke right?

Littering: 5,000 dollar fine

Vandalism : Caning

Handcuffs and shell casings are considered weapons.

And this little gem

Singapore has a mandatory death penalty for many narcotics offenses. Singapore police have the authority to compel both residents and non-residents to submit to random drug analysis and do not distinguish between drugs consumed before or after entering Singapore in applying local laws.

So, if someone kills one of your family members you wouldn't allow them to be imprisoned or put to death because that isn't a free society?

Listen, I'm a fucking anarchist, but that doesn't mean that I don't follow laws. Laws are for a reason, they're a SOCIAL contract! If I don't like a particular law then I would look to have it changed (or relocate).

"Oh and did I mention no trial by jury?"

And this was the basic outcome for many blacks in the US: there was an APPEARANCE of a fair trial, but that was all. Clearly that was a "socialist" era!

Most knee-jerk anit-socialist folks are just plain anti-social (many here spend more time talking to computers than actual people!).

I'm sitting here thinking back to the recent drills where we did force on force against the bad guy to make sure that the Family stays safe to survive the invasion. Those holes on them there targets within the bounds of Law as regarding to Castle Doctrine and Concealed Carry Defense are pretty strong and constricting.

We can expect... not to have to go through a extensive trial or court expenses to prove the dead bad guy actually is guitly of the crimes he is accused of after I bury my dead family.

There was a time long ago where people got together each week in the long house and decided how last week's laws worked out and either kept them or made new laws by common consent. Those found guilty are usually tried and punished the same day or executed prior to sunrise the next morning.

I said a democracy ( which is questionable I'll admit ) . You prove my point exactly. It doesn't matter to me whether Singapore is a democracy, communist, socialist but if they have a successful program no matter what the label then we should be able to look at it and see if it could be implemented or even improved upon.

The fact people can't even consider new ideas in order to discuss the potential positives/negatives in them shows the standard groupthink mentality force fed by the political correctness police. PC is just a way of restraining the free speech of those who are actually the majority of the population.

E.G - any one that dares to call a gay/jewish/black/mexican/communist guy an asshole is immediately slated because they are brainlessly categorised with all the ills of society gone and are therefore discriminated against. However it may just be the case that the guy was an asshole.

Socialism is not akin to communism and those of you alluding to such are probably part of the alarmingly high number of your countrymen who do not have passports.

Everything needs to be considered on its own merits and when things get pigeon holed into general categories is when bad things start to happen.

To bundle Germany, Sweden, Denmark etc in with Singapore as "socialism" is like bundling the US in with Iran as "regimes run by religious zealots". Both are in many respects however the application of this is far different, as are the results.

Economic freedom is arguably more fundamental than the civil liberties we see focused on in popular discussion and in the US Bill of Rights. Those countries have less economic freedom than we do here, even mindful of our current corporate-fascist form of government.

You are focused only on some rather pedestrian (albeit important) freedoms such as speech and religion. It's even debatable how much right to privacy one has in their home in the countries you list - certainly if you are the in group and conformist, as most of their populations are, you will never have a problem - but freedom is not merely for the benefit of the unthreatening conformist. Speak your mind on an issue where 90% of the population has been taught to disagree with your view and your supposed freedom will evaporate.

So, if you're a good little conformist consumer of the right color, language and ancestry, who wants only to sell their personal labor at government-set rates and within government-controlled parameters, those countries have a lot going for them. If you want genuine freedom, look elsewhere.

This should not be misinterpreted as some "USA #1" reply, as the USA certainly has plenty of infringements on freedom. But your view is simplistic.

The lady at H&R Block said that most of the investors she does tax returns for never make much for all their efforts. For the big boys at the funds who have the best programs, computers and research, it must be like taking candy from a baby!

It takes HR Block to do the taxes on thier magic computers. Enter a bunch of numbers, see the results. Positive expect a normal refund deposit, negative make payment with unsecured credit card and everything is electronically submitted to both State and Federal same afternoon.

Easy.

However. Imagine a world where millions dont have jobs, dont have unemployment and HR block implodes because there is no need for anything other than a one page 1040 EZ to report a income of zero the way things are going.

1. There is no bid on risk assets except the Fed. If that doesn't worry you, you are not paying attention.

2. China is a black hole, getting blacker.

3. There is no reason to expect good news from Europe, Japan, California, Illinois, etc. etc. ad nauseum.

I'm a coward on stocks, because risk is proportional to return. If you need to buy paper, go for utilities or quasi-utilities; electric companies, water companies, nat gas pipelines, railroads... You won't get fancy returns, but you should hold relative value.

“Why is privatizing Social Security such a turkey?” asks Sloan. “Because retirees shouldn’t have to depend on the market’s vagaries for survival money [translation: they should have to depend on the government damn it]."

Conclusion: Forced "investment" in the largest Ponzi scheme in the history of man (govt run Social Security) is better than allowing people to plot their own course with their own money. People are not responsible enough or smart enough to handle such things. Let the government take care of this -- govt is wise, efficient and, in its sole discretion, will determine how much each will "invest" and how much each will get paid upon retirement (to foster smoothing of unequal outcomes).

It does seem unlikely that everyone would have lost all of their private savings -- which is precisely where we are with Social Security for at least everyone under age 62 -- there is no fund with any money in it for them (spent on other things). Not saying privitization is close to perfect, but the current alternative is absurd. One could have buried the money and been better off.

Govt is only an extension of the larger lies that we tell ourselves, primary is that we can grow without limit. Remove all the govts that you can think of and it would still end up the same. All that you wish to horde would eventually be taken from you or be viewed as meaningless/worthless.

All big systems must, and will, die, even "capitalism" (which is predicated on unending growth).

It's all a house of cards. But, if you feel better about blaming some evil entity, them by all means, have at it; however, know this: it ain't fact, it ain't the fundamental issue.

Nigeria's anti-corruption agency on Tuesday charged former U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney over a bribery scheme involving oil services firm Halliburton Co. during time he served as its top official, a spokesman said.

The charges stem from a case involving as much as $180 million allegedly paid in bribes to Nigerian officials, said Femi Babafemi, a spokesman for the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission.

Sorry, lost me at: "9. Privatize Social Security: New GOP Congress loves dumb ideas" The dumb idea was that the government should be in the personal retirement savings arena at all. Privatising SS? Maybe, maybe not; if people will take initiative and responsibility for their own retirements, then whatever rate of return they can generate, in whatever markets they choose, will almost certainly beat the <1% historical SS return (lower, if you factor in inflation, which is also about to go parabolic). SS was a poor idea at best; having the government guarantee a minimal cash flow at retirement is one of those socialist "feel-good" schemes to start with, appointing the government as "nanny" for the elderly. Crooked politicians quickly perverted it beyond recognition; now it's a joke, no sane individual thinks it will last another twenty years, or that it will be worth anything (galloping inflation) if it does. Doesn't matter; reality wins, every time, sooner or later. Once Helicopter Ben finishes destroying the dollar, million-buck monthly checks won't buy the dog food you need for three square meals a day in the ObamaNation. Why don't economists and columnists understand that? Or are they all "on the take" for a bigger government role in everything? /rant off; back to regular delusions everyone

Yep, pretty much the exact same article Farrell wrote last year. Then he disappears for a while, market flies, he jumps back in with the same old nonsense and will now disappear for a couple more months.

Seriously, this guy has been doom since SPX 666, has missed a tremendous run in stocks and still, still, whines about it repeating the same tired mantra.

Interesting. more and more I see this article as just playing in to the hands of us ZHers who are very bearish. Paul spends a lot or words bashing the GOP and just a few low shots at Barry. I have read about liberals infiltrating blogs en-mass to spin negative GOP propaganda. Both sides have fucked up bad, but clearly, this is intended to hit Republicans. Funny, just after the tax deal yesterday. This is Soros 100%.

Excuse me retard, but ZH is not the same as your Rush Limbaugh approved crap. Farrell is not a Democrat and ZH is not a Republic party blog. Most of us here long ago realized that there is only 1 party and that's the moneymen. The rest of us are plebes. The whole left/right bitchfest is a sideshow.